


tell me you're joking

by sambambucky



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Already Started The Sequel, Alternate Universe - College/University, And Not a Beta To Be Seen, Getting Together, M/M, Not Quite Sure If It's "Treated Seriously", One Percent Plot and Ninety Nine Percent Dialogue, The Way I Just Giggled My Way Through The Entire Draft, Why Did I Write This?, crack adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25970323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sambambucky/pseuds/sambambucky
Summary: find another weed guy i can’t fuck with you… -Buhhhmm nothing personal i can’t fall in love right now and youre everything i love soif i ever see you again i’ll never let go of your hand -Bsooo yeah -B"What the fuck?" Sam says.*Based onthis.I'm considering this a spiritual prequel tojust wanna get you high, cuz why not!
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Sam Wilson, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark
Comments: 11
Kudos: 77





	tell me you're joking

“What the fuck,” Sam says, elongating the vowels under his breath. He’s read the texts three times already, but they somehow still say the same thing.

“What is it? He ask you out?” Rhodey says from next to him, leaning into his space just lazily enough that Sam has time to snatch his phone out of view.

The last thing he wants to see right now is Rhodey’s I Told You So dance. They’ve been smoking for hours now, hotboxing this shed-turned-workshop-turned-den and he’ll pull off the most obnoxious version of it, the one where he sings and invites Tony to do back-up vocals.

Just the memory of their last performance makes Sam seriously consider going home.

“No,” Sam answers, but something in his voice must betray him because Tony looks up from his phone to share a look with Rhodey that promises trouble.

Rhodey had warned him, yes, but this... This is a little more than Sam not listening.

“Just don’t hang around him too much,” Rhodey had told him, “He’s clingy, wants to be everybody’s friend. Just your type, actually.”

Technically, Sam _had_ listened, because he distinctly remembers telling Rhodey to fuck off, only to be smugly reminded of the last three people Rhodey had tried to warn him about. People Sam thought were just friends, classmates, acquaintances. People he was being _platonically_ kind to, the way his parents had raised him to be. Tina had called him an asshole, accused him of relentlessly flirting with her every time they studied together, stringing her along when he wasn’t interested. Zach had called him a tease, storming out of his apartment after Sam had to explain that he _meant_ it when he’d said he was funny, but that wasn’t an invitation to anything else. And then, Leslie. He tries not to think about Leslie, anymore. What a fucking disaster.

Every time Sam thought he was just being friendly. 

Which is just his damn luck because when he does try to flirt, it always goes left so quickly he ends up with a headache. Two years ago he asked Rhodey out, and while they did end up at the movies together, Pepper and Tony were also there, and he ended the night as an honorary fourth member of their weird clique of misfits.

So, okay, that hadn’t worked out so bad.

Still, even though Rhodey is technically wrong - Bucky _didn’t_ ask him out - Sam knows telling him the truth will be exponentially worse. 

Sam sighs and puts his phone into his pocket, gets up to find a snack. He’ll have to respond eventually, won’t he? As much as he’d like to pretend he never saw it, it’s definitely impolite not to at least respond with _okay_ , or _what_ , or something. Sam actually has no idea how he's supposed to respond. He’s not usually the one being pushed away. 

_I’ll never let go of your hand_ , Sam remembers, and blinks at the open fridge in front of him. He can still feel Tony and Rhodey’s gaze on him, knows they’ll never drop it without some kind of explanation. The two of them are the biggest gossips he’s ever known. He’s lucky Pepper isn’t here to give him that look on top of everything else. No one’s secrets are safe against That Look.

Sam turns around, shuts the fridge empty-handed.

“Well?” Tony asks, impatient and teasing all the same.

“Well, what?” Sam answers. He’s going to tell them, he has to tell them. He has to tell _someone_.

Because Bucky is a bizarre dude. (Loves to talk about aliens and alternate realities. It’s cute, in that same way that Sam finds everyone’s passionate speeches about their hobbies cute. Hm, maybe not in the _same_ way.) But this text is way out of left field.

Right?

Sam reflects back on all the time they’ve spent together, the meaningless friendship they’ve built around dependable transactions. The thing is, Bucky is just... nice. It was no hardship to stay and smoke with him in his ugly champagne Camry, invite him into his apartment to sample something new, spend hours lounging and laughing, listening to music and watching Planet Earth. It was all just so normal. Easy. Fun. Sam had assumed the whole routine was just Bucky’s regular order of operations. He wasn’t special because Bucky liked smoking with him.

Right?

“What did he say?” Rhodey follows up after Sam’s opened a bag of cheese puffs just for something to do with his hands.

“What did who say?”

“Bucky!” Rhodey and Tony say at the same time, and Sam rolls his eyes.

“How do you know it was Bucky?”

“Who else would be texting you?” Tony asks, too curious to actually be mean, but Sam flips him off anyway.

“I have friends besides the two of you,” Sam scowls. Tony sticks his tongue out at him and Rhodey rolls his eyes.

“Steve doesn’t text." 

“And Scott and Nat don’t count,” Tony adds. Sam doesn’t know what that's supposed to mean, but Rhodey continues before he can ask.

“Are you going to tell us? Or am I going to have to forcibly remove your phone from you?”

“Again,” Tony adds, always helpful. Sam hates them both.

“He said find a new plug.”

In the disbelieving silence, Sam is compelled to elaborate. “He said he’s in love with me, and if we see each other again, he’s never gonna stop holding my hand.”

He means for it to be funny, like, can you believe this guy, but it comes out a bit too serious even to his own ears.

That doesn't stop Tony from outright snorting with laughter anyway. Rhodey shakes his head, relaxing back into the couch cushion. 

“Man, I told you. Didn’t I tell you?”

“You told me,” Sam puts his hands up in mock surrender. “You told me not to hang out with him because he’ll wanna be my friend. That’s not what this is.”

“But you have been hanging out with him,” Tony accuses.

“A lot,” Rhodey finishes. 

“Only when I buy from him,” Sam lies. It's really no use telling them the truth, anyway. They're not even focusing on the problem. Bucky doesn't want to see him again, and that's making panic roll through Sam's chest and into his gut. He starts to pace, trying to piece together how exactly this went so wrong.

“You should call him,” Tony says, shifting on the couch to put his head in Rhodey’s lap like a cat curling up for a nap. It's all too casual for the way Sam's heart has started racing.

“Call him and tell him you love him, too.” Rhodey says, neither a joke nor suggestion. 

“I -” Sam tries. He’s _not_ in love with his dealer. He’s not _in love_ with Bucky.

“See, the fact that you’re not doing your usual _‘We’re just friends!’_ squawk, is already telling on yourself.”

Sam crosses his arms and drums his fingertips on his bicep. He uncrosses them and eats a fistful of chips. He thinks about Bucky; about his soft hair tied up in a bun and wrists covered in stupid bracelets, about him eating tacos cross-legged on the floor, about the way his eyes get squinty when he laughs, about the endless parade of goddam Shrek memes.

Sam thinks about finding a new hook up, and not having an excuse to see Bucky again. He thinks _youre everything I love_ and groans, getting up to make a phone call.

“Atta boy,” Rhodey encourages with a wink. Sam inhales deeply to try and shake the nerves prickling his fingertips.

By the time he’s outside and far enough from listening ears, he feels ridiculous. There’s a chance Bucky was just joking. He could be referencing something that Sam just doesn’t remember, or doesn’t know. He’s joked about holding hands before, months ago when they knew each other significantly less. Maybe this was just a riff off of that.

Sam sighs and dials Bucky before he can talk himself out of it. He has no idea what he’s going to say, or what he even wants Bucky to say, but he’s gotta talk to him. For every ring that goes unanswered, the urgency grows. He has to talk to Bucky, leaving a voicemail is simply not a goddam option.

“Hey,” Bucky answers, interrupting Sam’s thoughts. He already sounds different, already pulling away. 

“Hey,” Sam says, a little bit panicked. “Hey, uhm, I got your text? What - What the hell. You don’t wanna see me anymore?”

“Sam, I don’t - This isn’t about what I want, okay?”

“What the fuck is it about then? Did you see what you sent? Nothing personal, I just don’t want to see you ever again?”

“Sam,” Bucky says in a breathy laugh, “I’m just - I just really like you. It’s kinda fucked up.”

“What’s fucked up about it?” Sam chokes out around a near hysterical laugh.

God, this... This was dumb, calling him. Sam could have just just brushed it off, played it as a joke, _lol fuck you loser_ would have sufficed. Now, he’s what? Trying to date his weed man? Begging Bucky to be in love with him? Fucking Tony and Rhodey - if they’re not fucking up their own social lives, they’re fucking up his. _“Call him.” “I told you.” “Here’s my guy's number, just your type.”_

Assholes.

“Sam?” he hears Bucky say, and Sam realizes too late that he hasn’t heard a single second of Bucky’s explanation. Bucky sighs through the receiver and Sam’s going to run into traffic, or climb into a hole, or jump off - 

“It’s fine, really,” Bucky is still talking, clearly unaware of the mess in Sam's head, “I know you have Clint’s number. Maybe after a few weeks of not seeing you, I’ll be over -”

“No,” Sam blurts, “No, no. I don’t want to buy from Clint. I don’t want to not see you, I don’t want you to move on.”

It’s Bucky’s turn to be quiet now, and Sam gets it. He’s only just realizing it all himself. Oh god, if Bucky was just joking…

“I don’t - I wasn’t - Were you serious?”

“Yeah?” Bucky answers, and Sam can see him in his minds' eye, hands in pockets, shrugging, _shy_. The way he used to get when he’d get to the end of a rant about his favorite Star Trek allegory for the human condition. 

“You’re so cute,” Sam says, voice breathy with realization.

“Huh?” Bucky responds, and Sam grins out into the yard.

“Buck,” Sam says, taking a breath and finding the confidence he needs. “Can I take you out? On a date?”

“Sam, I - You don’t have to, like -”

“I wanna hold your hand,” Sam confesses. And, yeah, maybe he hadn’t exactly thought about it before those insane texts, but. Sam can kinda see it now. Bucky here with him, sitting in the grass, watching the sky, hand in hand. It could be cute. It would be really fucking nice, actually.

On the other line, Bucky breaks the silence with a laugh that starts easy, but bubbles over quickly into something loud and unbelieving. Sam wishes he was there to see it. The way Bucky throws his head back and squeezes his eyes shut when he gets a real, deep chuckle in? Sam has half a mind to scrape some cash together for an excuse to see him right now.

“That text,” Bucky huffs out between a few more giggles, “I did not think this is how it would go.”

“The guy of your dreams asking you out?”

Bucky calms down a bit and sighs a bit too dreamily for Sam's head to wrap itself around.

“Yeah,” he answers, and that’s a hell of a thing -- Bucky’s capacity for earnestness is endless. Sam could get used to this.

“Funny, because you haven’t actually answered.”

“Sam,” Bucky responds, voice clearer like he’s moved the phone closer to his mouth, “I’d love to go out with you. As long as you don’t wear those pineapple pants.”

Sam laughs and gives Bucky his most put upon sigh, “That was _one_ time! It was laundry day -”

“And they weren’t even yours, I know, I know. My condition still stands.” 

“So, Saturday? I’ll wear jeans and we can... go to the planetarium? We can hold hands under the stars.”

“It’s a date,” Bucky responds, still sounding a little breathless. Sam gets it. He might be a little bit in love with Bucky too.

**Author's Note:**

> One of my favorite winterfalcon dynamics:  
>  **Bucky** : I'm in love with you.  
>  **Sam** : uhhhhhh, okay? Sure, let's give it a go.  
>   
> Comments & Kudos really give me life, you have no idea. You could also come bother me on [my tumblr](https://sambambucky.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
